Nowadays, refrigerators have become a common appliance in virtually every household and typically are used for storage and preservation of food, in particular of fresh food such as fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and the like. It is desirable to keep the food items fresh as long as possible in the refrigerator.
It is a well known problem that many food items tend to release malodors into the air which are then captured in the limited air space in a refrigerator. Not only are these malodors unpleasant and offensive to the user of the refrigerator, they can also have a negative impact on the quality of other foods in the refrigerator. For example, it is known that some foods emit strong odors (e.g. fish, boiled eggs, onions, etc.) and that these odors can transfer to other nearby foods and hurt the taste and freshness of those foods. A common example is transfer of odors into an open container of orange juice or of milk resulting in a noticeable degradation in their taste. It is also well known that malodors from some vegetables (onions, garlic) can transfer to other foods stored within a vegetable drawer. This problem is aggravated when the vegetable drawer is sealed such that there is very little air exchange with the larger compartment of the refrigerator (herein referred to as the “fresh food compartment”) and when vegetables have been cut or are stored without any outer wrapping. This problem of odor transfer is particularly acute in the case of ice cubes where odors from the fresh food compartment of the refrigerator can be transferred to the ice in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. This is especially true in the case of refrigerators in which there is air exchange between the fresh food and freezer compartments, and especially in the case of refrigerators with built-in ice-makers.
A common attempt to solve this odor contamination problem is the use of an opened box of baking soda, especially in the refrigerators. However, this static method is not very effective, because the bulk of the baking soda is not exposed to the contaminated air, and the air movement around the baking soda is minimal. In addition, there is the possibility that an opened box of baking soda could be tipped over, creating a mess in the refrigerator.
The ARM & HAMMER® Division of the Church & Dwight Co., Inc. of Princeton, N.J., U.S.A. has also recently introduced a product known as FRIDGE-n-FREEZER™ FLOW-THRU FRESHENER™ that attempts to address some of these problems. The FRIDGE-n-FREEZER™ FLOW-THRU FRESHENER™, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,624,366, is essentially a box of baking soda that has openings on the sides to increase the amount of surface area of the box through which the baking soda is exposed. The baking soda is contained in the box by a “cloth filter” nonwoven material that is positioned between the baking soda and the openings in the box. This product, however, suffers from the disadvantages that the baking soda is still packed so densely in the box that air is unable to flow through the baking soda, or be drawn through the baking soda, and this product must rely on air convection and diffusion to bring malodors adjacent to the openings on the box.
There also exist in the art devices for deodorizing confined spaces such as disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. No. 5,403,548 and in U.S. Pat. No. 5,772,959. However, these devices as such fail to be capable of deodorizing those complexly structured confined spaces which comprise portions which are not reached by normal air convection. In these portions which include, for example, drawers for fresh fruits and vegetables in a refrigerator, malodors may be trapped and hence may not be reached by deodorizing devices placed in the main compartment.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus and a method for deodorizing confined spaces which overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art.